Devil Entendre Read online

  He shrugged. “Here, there. I can pretty much claim every continent and culture. Why, you need pureblood pedigree papers?” His arm draped over her shoulders and down her arm with all the weight of a python, exotic and thrilling enough to rule out any potential danger.

  It caused her gaze to sink, dragged down with the anchor that was her heart. I’m not special. He is. This is a mistake or a trick or—

  Whisp had returned before Addy’s thoughts could go further, carrying a glass full of something red and steaming. “It’s got a kick. Hundred-twenty proof. Drink one quarter at a time, in fifteen minute intervals.”

  Addy has not only grown accustomed to the “kick,” she craves it. Already on today’s second sip, melting into an uncomfortable antique chair with olive green velvet upholstery, she eyes Cam and Whisp conversing in the corner. Something about the Egyptian goddess Hathor and turquoise beads. “You know,” Addy interrupts, “I just realized what’s weird about your store. No elves or trolls or whatever. Kind of shattered my ’New Age’ stereotypes.”

  Whisp snorts, gestures to Cam. “There’s no need for elf figures or posters when—”

  “When this isn’t some dungeons and dragons gaming shop,” Cam finishes. “This is serious. It’s science.”

  “Science?”

  “The science researched and perfected before test tubes and patents broke medicine’s timeline.”

  Whisp, usually one to rant ad nauseam on the subject, stays mum, focusing instead on sorting inventory. An awkward vibe permeates the room. Addy chimes in with, “Makes sense in a drunken way.”

  Whisp touches Cam’s hand, saying, “Tonight I have a special treat for you.”

  His stomach rumbles and he excuses himself, disappearing with Whisp into some distant, multicolored chamber in the maze of books and candles and herbs. Addy counts down the minutes until her next sip.

  While walking with Cam to his row house frigid gusts of air carry a familiar voice to Addy’s ears. “Adhan! Adhan, is that you?”

  She turns to see Troy Boto jogging to catch up, and stops Cam. He asks her, “You know this guy?”

  “My oncologist.”

  Boto catches up, squinting against the winter sun. He buttons his corduroy jacket as he speaks. “Adhan, what in the world? Where have you been?” She attempts an explanation about alternative therapies, but he cuts her off. “Seriously? You were this close to receiving groundbreaking treatment that could add fifteen years to your life! You know what I had to do to get you into that trial? I practically had to give a lap-dance to the head of the—” It finally hits him. “My God. You look…healthy.”

  “That’s right, doc.”

  “But how—”

  “Sorry,” Cam says, trying to physically steer Addy away. “We’ve really got to be somewhere.”

  Boto clears his throat. “Aren’t you going to introduce your gorgeous companion?”

  Addy is too surprised to respond, so Cam takes the initiative, offering a hand. “Cam Alptraum.”

  “Troy Boto, doctor Troy Boto.” Then, “Alptraum. What’s that, like Scandinavian? Swiss?”

  “Close enough. Like I said, though, we really have to get a move on. Pleasure to meet you.”

  “The pleasure’s mine.”

  Once inside Cam’s front door Addy snickers. “Wow. Didn’t see that coming.”

  “Your doctor seemed nice enough.” Then, off her look, “Or not.”

  Unable to restrain himself any longer Cam takes her to the sofa, the floor, the bed, his mouth and tongue mapping every muscle group, every nerve cluster. As always the act leaves a patch of emptiness, something she chalks up to emotional inertia.

  That group of men when she was eleven years old, the ones who captured her, they invade her thoughts as Cam climbs off her, rolls onto the bed.

  What she remembers best about the abortion her parents forced on her are the pair of gray wall-mounted plastic boxes. Not in the abortion clinic, but in the hospital a month later when doctors had to remove the bits of her child that remained, clinging to her insides, resistant to the abortionist’s attentions. Those boxes in her recovery room bore large green labels reading “sharps only.” From an orange portion in the middle bloomed sharp, alluring petals forming a shape she later learned to translate as “biohazard.” Other boxes loomed in wire racks, filled with plastic gloves of varying size. People won’t ever touch me again, not without plastic gloves on, she thought at the time. Not even mama and papa.

  She wonders if she could ever share her past with Cam, or the fact that her attackers were never brought to justice.

  And her parents. Their restrained harassment and criticism of her social life compounded the sting of her single status. Her father chastised her time and again with, “You one of them ’zero population growth’ tree-hugging types?” She would run out and humiliate herself in bars and the workplace until finally snaring a date, after which she would find herself unable to go through with any variety of physical intimacy. I’ll never be able to touch anyone ever again. Not even mama and papa. If only her parents were still alive to see her with…with…

  “What are you?” Addy pins Cam to the spot with her glare as he attempts to enter the bathroom.

  “Told you. I’m from all—”

  “No, see, I’m talking what. That Portuguese plumber and those Asian tourists and the Ethiopians in that restaurant and every janitor or taxi driver we meet. You can talk to them just fine no matter what language they got.” The fact that something shifts behind his eyes, some endgame thought rising to the surface, confirms she is on the right path. “And every man, woman, or beast wants a piece of you. It’s not natural.”

  “No. It’s not.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “What do you want to hear? That I’m an elf? Okay, so I’m an elf. Can I go clean up now?” He doesn’t wait for a response. The shower comes and goes and she is still in the trance of assimilation when he reenters. “What?”

  “Oh sweet Jesus Lord above. Your ears. Are they pointy or…something?”

  “What do you think?”

  Addy can imagine him with ears that should suit an animal more aptly than a person. “I think yes. I think maybe you do.”

  “Okay then. I’ve got pointy ears. I’m not human so the words of your nations are all the same to me, and my tongue can sound like anything.”

  Despite her best effort to remain angry the mention of his tongue causes the muscles in her thighs to flex. But resentment already takes up too much storage space, what with all the STDs from her solitary, forced sexual encounter, and the resulting cervical cancer, and… “Okay, so for a second let’s say that’s for real. Does that mean you totally don’t look or feel like that? Are you ever really inside me even? Are—”

  Her jaw is in Cam’s grip, his nose against hers. He licks her lips, their mouths pull at each other, and the need for words is lost.

  The yearly Christmas family get-together is, for once, not daunting but welcome. It is a chance for Addy to show her brothers and sisters she is not hopeless, that she might even do better than the rest of them combined. Especially her younger sister, Mirelle, who is hosting the festivities. Mirelle is expecting her first child, a source of happiness in Addy, but also friction: her own aspirations grinding up against harsh reality.

  She understands now the reverence with which the members of Whisp’s coven regard Cam, and why there’s no point in them having hokey elf trinkets, not when the real thing is among them. Her thumb traces a circular pattern around the protection amulet Whisp gave her, imagines it strengthening her, believes it to be so.

  Her own family’s interactions with Cam follow a similar pattern as the coven’s: unabashed adoration of both the mind and the body housing it, vying for attention, laughing too loud at even the mildest humor. Mirell
e with her gorgeous hair and light complexion, her husband Keith and his resonant, intoxicating voice and the distracting gap in his teeth. Eldest brother Melvin, oversized and darkest in complexion and mood. Corvis, flamboyant in attire and weighed down by four children and as many baby-mamas. The youngest of the bunch is Freaky Shay, whose internet “modeling career” isn’t something they discuss around the youngins. Their parents informally adopted Shay when the siblings were teenagers which—coupled with the decade age gap between Shay and the others—somehow makes her antics tolerable. None of their love lives have foreseeable happy endings save perhaps Mirelle and Keith, but until recently Addy’s didn’t even have a beginning.

  This is enough, she decides. There is no need to spill all that she now knows about Cam, no need to risk awkwardness, angry words. Her family does not need him to be some magical fairy tale creature. The authenticity of something beautiful and potent and tamed among them—belonging to some part of them—is remarkable enough. Addy can feel that familiar old black growth receding from her bones, her guts.

  As so often happens with special occasions time speeds up: the covert nods of approval after her kin interact with Cam, helping to set the table, gossiping with Corvis and Shay as they prepare the salad, looking for Grammy Tawnda’s serving platter, instead seeing Cam talking with Mirelle and rubbing her belly as they have all done, comforting her while discussing baby names and maternity tips—no doubt some New Age lore involving herbs of some sort. Without warning dinner is ready and things are fifteen minutes late as it is and the unexpected snow might derail travel plans if they linger too long and Melvin is yelling something, but that is usual for him. As he continues something is clearly off in the tone of his voice. Addy finds him over Mirelle, who is convulsing on the floor of her den while clutching her belly…and bleeding.

  The air’s coldness does not register until she and the family are already in the waiting room, thawing out from their hurried travel, too anxious to settle into the molded plastic chairs while news network anchors debate some point or another on the three wall-mounted monitors. Only now does the throbbing in Addy’s triceps pierce her stupor. It is the result of Keith elbowing his way past her into the den, summoned by her own screams, himself shouting for his wife to respond. She does not blame him. Instead she rubs absently at the tender spot, watching Cam return from washing his hands in the bathroom. Something about Mirelle’s blood. That spot of thick blood on the carpet, so dark it seemed fake, richer even than the maroon wood stain of Keith’s prized bookshelves.

  She has lost track of the time despite having checked her cellphone every ten minutes. Corvis nudges her, gestures to the pair of swinging doors with windows in them, then kicks Melvin’s foot multiple times to get his attention. A doctor was approaching the family from the other side, but has been physically stopped by another doctor. Both are drained, sweaty, on edge. They exchange words.

  What about Cam? He can be described as either being zen given the circumstances, or bored.

  “A fetus doesn’t just open some secret hatch and leave without anybody knowing!”

  “If you’re so smart you go tell them something that makes sense, jackass!”

  “There isn’t anything that makes—”

  An RN steps up to the arguing doctors, whispers something, nods in the direction of Addy’s family. The argument dies.

  “What did he just say?” They all turn to Keith as he unsteadily collapses into a chair. “What did he just say what did he just say what did he just—”

  Worse than that is the one memory working itself loose from the tangle of Addy’s mind: when she went to find Cam and let him know something was wrong, that an ambulance had been called, he was reclining alone while snacking in private, back to the door, his demeanor more nervous than surprised when he turned to her.

  Addy is in Cam’s apartment awaiting his arrival. From work? Recreation? She never pried into how he whiles his time away. For all she knows he exists in some other dimension when he is out of her view.

  The sun is absent. Addy has been standing across from the front door for hours. When the handle finally turns, when the door swings open, jangling keys provide no warning as Cam keeps his door unlocked.

  Although visibly irritated himself even the most casual glance exposes the profundity of Addy’s own disturbance. “What’s wrong?”

  “I had to go and let you touch my heart.”

  He sighs, tosses his jacket on a chair. “I’ve had enough of a day as it is, so can’t this just wait until tommor—”

  “It always used to be I’d think of my sickness growing and think it was turning whatever it touched black inside, corrupted. Evil. But that’s you, isn’t it? That’s what you do.”

  “You know what they say: once the heart goes black it never goes back.” Off her lack of response he adds, “A little survivor humor?” Nothing. “To answer your question, I do the opposite.”

  She produces a knife and its blade waivers in the space between them, a blind person’s cane tap-tap-tapping the air. “Does is even matter to you that Mirelle and Keith separated?!” She swings her other arm, the one she is using to grip her laptop. “He accused her of terminating the baby! He accused her!”

  “I didn’t know that. What’s it have to do with your computer?”

  “You wanna know what it has to do with my computer? Do you?” She gestures wildly at the screen without turning it to face him. “Everything you find on here once you get past all the cute cereal elves and Christmas elves and action movie elves, it’s all this grim, bleak, ten shades of nasty nonsense!”

  “If you’re worried about me gettin’ nasty—”

  “Demonic is more like it!”

  With a clenched jaw and a sigh he leans forward, forces the laptop closed. “I always did hate computers. And know-it-alls. Elf, incubus, sucubus, trauco, älvor, whatever. You want to split hairs all of a sudden? Don’t be goofy. Or worse, stupid. You think cranberries are keeping you alive? Some kind of tree bark? Grow up.”

  “What’s that supposed to—”

  Rushing forward his hand is against her flesh from the inside, coming away slick, with traces of red in the creases of his knuckles. Her gaze bounces between her ribcage—now apparently the site of some painless violation—and his hand. Between his fingers is a pearl-sized mass. It disappears between his lips.

  “You’re a walking buffet. I’m eating you day and night. Just the parts that are eating you. Want me to leave so you can get back to being a lonely nobody? You’re in that much of a hurry to die? Sure.”

  He makes for the door. Projected on his back are the oxygen machine, the sterile bed, the fact that nobody will be there to dab her mouth with a damp cloth. Twelve thousand new cases every year with one in three dying.

  Before she knows what is happening she is on her knees, not in prayer but agony. The pain of knowledge: he was feeding, not making love to her, and that against everything she assumed about herself she will beg him to stay.

  Relief has settled over Addy since dropping all pretense of curative treatment. She could not go back to that shop, drink the tincture, face the coven members after the revelation that they were in on the hoax, knew Cam was consuming her.

  Today something if different with him. When he caresses her face he becomes unsettled. He breaks contact in a hurried, awkward fashion, startling her only for the fact that she has never seen him execute a movement lacking grace.

  “What?”

  “You need to go see a doctor.”

  “Aren’t you taking care of all that?”

  “No, this is something different. Not the cancer, maybe some other disease, or…just go see a doctor.”

  “How in the world can you tell? Some kind of magic spell stuff?”

  “There’s nothing magic about being able to taste your hormones when I touch
you.” Then, off her expression, “How else am I going to know when and where to eat?”

  Addy takes his advice, and the next few days are a blur. After a cursory exam the doctor administers a simple test to confirm their suspicions: Addy is pregnant. All emotions and thoughts are eclipsed by the memory of Cam in Mirelle’s study, making small talk with her while rubbing her pregnant belly, his nervous glance over his shoulder when Addy caught him snacking and red-lipped afterward. The images cycle over and over until the trance of cognitive dissonance tightens its grip on her perception and she functions on autopilot until something cold presses against her naked thigh. She is recumbent, dressed in a surgical gown, with low-grade ceiling tile looming overhead. Robotic insect droning rattles from failing light fixtures. Anatomy charts, emergency exit procedures, and patient’s rights notices are tacked on the bone-white walls.

  A man—presumably a doctor—stands between Addy’s legs, taking his time about things in the same way as that group of men, sliding latex gloves into place. Her legs are mounted in stirrups. His visage is devoid of love while priming the cannula with lubricant, ready to damage her internally just like those laughing men with their empty beer bottles mercilessly thrusting after they had tired of using themselves on her preteen body.

  They administered a sedative, she remembers now, and she credits it with rousing her senses. Nitrous oxide is positioned to her left; she knows that because they just finished explaining how to administer it to herself during the procedure at her discretion.

  Behind her an assistant starts up the vacuum machinery, and the motorized hum which haunts her dreams revs up.

  “Excuse me!” Much to the doctor’s chagrin Addy herself undoes the tenaculum forceps clamping her uterus, holds up an authoritative finger. “I just…I need a minute.”